House Communications Subcommittee Vice Chair Doris Matsui and Rep. Anna Eshoo, both D-Calif., led a Friday push with eight other Democrats for Biden administration officials Friday to use Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding to collocate broadband and electric vehicle charging infrastructure buildouts. The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, which gets $5 billion in IIJA, "requires state agencies deploying EVs to have a connected charger network to facilitate data collection, accessibility, and reliability," the lawmakers wrote Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. "These connectivity requirements for EV charging infrastructure often require broadband access, which can be sparse in remote areas. To meet the 97 percent reporting standards of the NEVI Formula Program, stakeholders and agencies must address the broadband access challenges in rural and underserved communities." Digital equity "disparities exist in areas where access to broadband is non-existent or unaffordable and disproportionately affects rural areas and communities of color," the lawmakers said: IIJA "acknowledged these disparities and provided $65 billion for broadband expansion, including grants for internet service expansion in unserved and underserved areas."

NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield urged Congress Thursday via the leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture and Commerce committees to “take prompt action in addressing current concerns about our nation’s communications supply chain by providing greater flexibility in meeting broadband deployment program requirements, facilitating increased domestic production of communications equipment, and ensuring that smaller broadband providers do not suffer disproportionate impacts from supply chain concerns.” It “takes more than increased funding and commitment to community to deliver on the promise of broadband for those still waiting to be connected,” Bloomfield said in a letter to Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., House Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and their GOP ranking members. “Broadband networks cannot be built when broadband network supplies cannot be obtained, and the already-high costs of deploying networks will become even higher if there is a shortage of supplies.” Many “policymakers have rightly focused on supply chain security in recent years, but there is increasing concern as well about supply chain resiliency,” which has “the potential to undermine national objectives to connect as many Americans as possible in the coming years under these new programs,” she said. “New initiatives launching in the next few years have significant potential to exacerbate these strains in the current supply chain.“ Bloomfield said NTIA’s broadband, equity, access and deployment program “will only realize its full potential if work begins now to clear bottlenecks and encourage increased production.”

Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., filed the Proper Leadership to Align Networks (Plan) for Broadband Act Thursday to require the Biden administration to develop a national broadband strategy the GAO recommended in late May. Reps. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., and Peter Welch, D-Vt., filed the House companion. The GAO believes a national strategy is needed because 15 federal agencies administer more than 100 broadband connectivity programs, causing some overlap (see 2206010068). The bill says the national strategy must “support better management of Federal broadband programs to deliver on the goal of providing high speed, affordable broadband” to everyone in the U.S., “synchronize interagency coordination among” federal broadband programs, coordinate on approving grants “of an easement, right of way, or lease to, in, over, or on a building or any other property owned by the Federal Government for the right to install, construct, modify, or maintain” broadband infrastructure and “reduce barriers, lower costs, and ease administrative burdens for State, local, and Tribal governments to participate in Federal broadband programs.” The strategy would be due within one year of the measure’s enactment, with the White House submitting an implementation plan 120 days after the strategy’s release. “A national broadband strategy will ensure our agencies are synchronized and manage these programs effectively to make sure that more Americans gain access to high-speed broadband," Wicker said. The bill “will help improve coordination between federal agencies and local and Tribal governments to deliver on the funding we made available to build high speed, affordable broadband,” Lujan said. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr praised lawmakers for filing the legislation. “This is a vital bill that would fill a key gap in the federal government’s approach to broadband infrastructure spending,” he said. "The lack of a national coordinating strategy coupled with the absence of performance and accountability measures will result in wasted dollars and families stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide."

Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee ranking member Thom Tillis, R-N.C., introduced legislation Wednesday he said will “restore patent eligibility” for innovative inventions across various fields. The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act is aimed at addressing patent eligibility confusion, and Tillis’ office said the bill would help strengthen U.S. positions in 5G, blockchain, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. The bill resolves concerns about the patenting of “mere ideas,” the “mere discovery of what already exists in nature, and social and cultural content that everyone agrees is beyond the scope of the patent system.” Computer & Communications Industry Association Patent Counsel Josh Landau said CCIA appreciates Tillis’ understanding “that this is a complex area of patent law and that it will take time to get it right. We have concerns about the expansion of eligibility the bill contains, and look forward to working with Senator Tillis to improve the bill."

Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., raised concerns Wednesday that language in Democrats' proposed Inflation Reduction Act reconciliation package that would set a 15% minimum corporate tax rate would include wireless carriers' spectrum assets. CTIA President Meredith Baker urged lawmakers during a Tuesday Communications Subcommittee hearing to make a “technical correction” to the proposal so it doesn’t cover spectrum assets (see 2208020076). Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., hopes to have a final vote on the reconciliation bill this weekend. The 15% corporate tax “would not only reduce the GDP and kill jobs, but would disproportionately punish American wireless carriers who have invested heavily in resources to fuel connectivity and build state-of-the-art networks,” Wicker said: “Wireless carriers have spent hundreds of billions of private-sector dollars on spectrum assets” and the proposal “would apply retroactively and prospectively to those purchases, diverting billions of dollars intended for future investment.” No “other country in the world has instituted a tax on spectrum,” he said. “China is working to undermine the United States as it seeks to dominate 5G and next-generation wireless technology. This makes the Democrats’ tax proposal not only an economic security issue but a national security issue as well.”

Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee leadership introduced bipartisan legislation Tuesday that would direct a federal study on improving the “patent examination process and the overall quality of patents” issued by the Patent and Trademark Office. Introduced by Chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking member Thom Tillis, R-N.C., the Patent Examination and Quality Improvement Act directs the comptroller general of the U.S. to deliver a report to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees one year after enactment with an evaluation on improving patent examination. The PTO would deliver another report a year after that. The PTO report would examine how to improve “technical training of patent examiners with respect to emerging areas of technology, the status of office IT systems, a 5-year IT modernization plan, an accounting of the use by the office of advanced data science analytics and a 5-year modernization plan regarding advanced data science analytics, and finally how the result of the application of advanced data science analytics can be regularly shared with the public.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee slated the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act for markup Thursday (see 2204200049 and 2204050074). This is the first time S-673 has been on the committee’s markup agenda, meaning it will be held over until Judiciary’s next executive business meeting, after the August recess. The JCPA would allow news publishers to negotiate revenue sharing with online platforms through an antitrust exemption. The bill proposes an “expansion of copyright and imposition of a link tax” so extreme that even the “Copyright Office recommended against it,” said Fight for the Future Director Evan Greer in a statement: “The bill would force tech platforms to carry and pay for links to articles from outlets the government designates as news.” NAB and the News Media Alliance support the legislation. Tech industry groups and various consumer advocates, including Public Knowledge, opposed iterations of the bill. PK Senior Policy Analyst Lisa Macpherson said Tuesday that the JCPA isn't the answer to journalism's challenges: It "forces news organizations to negotiate alongside publications with diametrically opposing values. The bill excludes only the nation's most giant news organizations from enjoying Big Tech's largesse, and lumps small outlets in with powerful behemoths who can make an outsized impact on negotiations. Finally, the bill encourages more consolidation in an already shrinking industry."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee plans a Wednesday confirmation hearing for Elastic Vice President-Security Strategy Nate Fick, President Joe Biden’s nominee to be ambassador at large-cyberspace and digital policy (see 2206030039). If confirmed, Fick would also head the State Department’s new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (see 2206070047). The panel will begin at 10 a.m. in 419 Dirksen, Senate Foreign Relations said.

NCTA and USTelecom are criticizing the Net Neutrality and Broadband Justice Act (HR-8573/S-4676) over its proposal to reclassify broadband as a Communications Act Title II service (see 2207280063). "Twenty years into an increasingly stale debate over net neutrality, the justifications for it seem increasingly limp," said NCTA CEO Michael Powell. "The case is particularly thin to justify the famed ‘nuclear option’ to reclassify carriers under Title II utility regulation which empowers the FCC with the authority to go big on new regulation.” The “once-in-a-lifetime” $65 billion in broadband funding included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act means “we need to be focused collectively on closing the digital divide and not taking a ride on the net neutrality carousel for the umpteenth time for no discernable reason,” Powell said: “Slapping an outdated and burdensome regulatory regime on broadband networks surely will damage the mission to deploy next-generation internet technology throughout America and get everyone connected.” ISPs “support net neutrality and already operate under these important principles while delivering real value and performance to customers,” said USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter. “There is bipartisan support for net neutrality, but legislative proposals that would put any of this progress at risk are not the right answer. Let’s keep our focus on moving consumers’ internet experiences forward, not backward.”

Intel was “thrilled to see the bipartisan vote in the Congress” to pass the chips package (see 2207280060), said CEO Pat Gelsinger on a Q2 earnings call Thursday. “We have been integrally involved in moving this groundbreaking legislation forward. This progress, combined with the strong momentum in Europe, will reshape our industry and bring us toward a geographically balanced, resilient supply chain that we are uniquely positioned to enable and benefit from.” Gelsinger personally had lobbied heavily for the chips package, threatening at one point to delay Intel’s $20 billion investment to build two semiconductor fabs in Ohio if Congress failed to pass the legislation before leaving for the August recess. "Literally since World War II, there might not have been a more important piece of industrial policy that’s came forward through Congress," said Gelsinger of the chips package. "This is great for the semiconductor industry," he said. "We see this as an accelerant to our strategy and something that will give us the capacity" to meet Intel's product needs, plus the needs of its foundry customers, he said. "This is powerful and something that we are thrilled to have come across the line just today."